


Riptide

by kaasknot



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clonecest, Edgeplay, M/M, Merfolk AU, Mild CBT, Xenophilia, kinbaku/shibari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24313378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: Storms put Echo in a fey mood. They mostly unnerved Fives, who wouldn’t mind the safety of the reef; but Echo, he needed to break the rules. As much effort as he put into upholding them, he got twice the joy in breaking them.
Relationships: CT-21-0408 | Echo/CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555
Comments: 10
Kudos: 82





	Riptide

A storm was coming. Fives could feel it in the currents tugging at the kelp roots, cold and insistent. Any sensible fish was bunkering down, finding their nests and burrows, or anchoring themselves to the nearest stipe, but no one had ever called Fives sensible. Electricity fizzled beneath his skin, tension coiling through his arms and tail.

“Echo?” He ducked beneath a sagging stand of kelp, the blades brushing over his shoulders and back. He shivered, urchin-spines breaking out over the thinner skin of his upper body.

They weren’t supposed to be here. It was dangerous; storms could uproot entire forests and drive hapless mers whole suns out into the open ocean, beyond the reach of their brothers’ songs. Fives, who’d swum a dozen campaigns against the iron mers from the surface, knew damn well a cyclone could kill as easily as a blade. He wasn’t a merling, too stupid to know how fragile he really was.

But he _was_ a warrior, and if he went too long between battles, sometimes the need for a thrill got the better of him.

A school of diwapa scattered before him, disoriented by the flickering light from above and the presence of a predator in their midst. Anticipation tightened Fives’s body. Blood pooled heavy in his groin, heating his cock, slicking his sheath.

“Echo, I know you’re there.” His clicks and whistles bounced back to him. There was a decipus on the seafloor building a fort against the current, and a handful crustaceans, their sounds bright and loud against the endless thicket of algae, looked ghostly in the wan stormlight. In the far distance, little more than a rumble in his ribcage, a pod of aiwha sang of the storm over their heads. A dozen echoes, but he couldn’t find _his_ Echo.

The surf crashed on the surface, a low thunder. Fives bit his lip in anticipation, savoring the prick of his teeth. Half of it was the rebellion. They had to obey orders to keep their brothers alive in combat, but there were times Fives wanted to stuff Cody’s head in the nearest anemone and do what _he_ wanted. If anything, Echo was worse. He knew every rule Cody’s council laid down—sometimes just so he could break them. Fives sucked in a breath, the taste of kelp and fish almost overwhelming, but underneath it—Echo. He was close. Playing hard-to-get. Storms put him in a fey mood; mostly they unnerved Fives, who wouldn’t mind the safety of the reef, but Echo, he needed to break the rules. As much effort as he put into upholding them, he got twice the joy in breaking them.

Fives whistled their signalling call, which they used in battle to keep tabs on each other. He didn’t like being alone with a storm brewing; Echo would answer their contact call, same as Fives would—it was a breach of trust not to.

There it was, the reply. Not far, at all. Fives drifted through the forest, hiding in the shadows and hunting. 

He found Echo in a dense thicket, and the water grew thick in Fives’s throat. Echo had tied his hands to a stipe using the seagrass rope Fives had made for him the year before. The loose end trailed in the currents; it had wrapped itself around one of Echo’s pelvic fins, tantalizingly close to his slit. 

The iron mers had standing orders to capture one of the sea mers, one of the flesh-and-blood warriors of Fives’s clan. They’d almost succeeded more than once, before the clan came down and cut their captured brother free. Fives had had nightmares about getting caught in those white nets, their fibers too strong to pick apart or break—or worse, Echo getting caught in one. He never would have thought he’d get off at the sight of Echo captured. But now, seeing his brother in the safest place Fives could think of besides the reef itself, his head resting against his arm and tied like a prisoner, Fives made a quick reassessment. Against Echo’s soft underbelly, bared by the position he’d put himself in, the barest tip of pink was visible, poking out from the folds of his body. Fives stared, sparks rolling down his spine. His own cock slipped out, just a tiny bit, into the bracing chill of the water.

He circled slowly, slipping through the kelp like Echo was a wheru and Fives was hunting dinner. Stipes swayed around him, revealing little glimpses of Echo’s gray-and-brown form one moment before swallowing him up the next. Fives felt himself slip out a little more, and he had to stop and suck in his pelvic muscles. He wasn’t a raw teenager, baring cock at the slightest passing current—but adrenaline and anticipation weren’t making it easy. He bit his lip as he made the final approach, the sweet taper of Echo’s bared torso just visible—

“I can smell you, asshole.”

Fives froze.

“ _And_ I can hear you, you’re sucking water like a goddamn whirlpool.”

“I am _not_!” The words fell out before Fives had time to engage his brain.

“I _knew_ it! I fucking knew it! And you call yourself a hunter!”

Fives darted forward and jabbed Echo in the kidney. “You’re fucking lucky I was actually there,” he muttered, his tail lashing and his cheeks hot.

Echo bared his teeth like a shark. “You’ll never fool me, brother.”

The loose end of the rope was still dangling by Echo’s hips. Fives snatched it up and hauled; the slipknot around Echo’s wrists went tight. “I’m not the fool who tied himself up just before a storm, am I?”

Echo gave a reedy gasp, his back arching to ease the tension on his elbows. “I read you like the fucking currents, Fives,” he said, his eyes going heavy-lidded. “You want this just as much as I do. You should be _thanking_ me.”

They were so fucked for each other. It hit Fives sometimes, like a smack in the face, how much he loved his slimy eel of a brother. _Loved_ him, so much it fucking hurt, an ache in his chest that wouldn’t go away. He pressed up against Echo and kissed him, kissed that smug grin off his face, kissed the snarky words out of his mouth, nipped along his lower lip and did his damndest to kiss the constantly churning thoughts right out of Echo’s head.

That’s what this was about, after all: as much as Fives needed to burn off his spare energy, Echo needed a jet of hot water in his ice-cold stream of consciousness long enough for him to just… _stop_. Stop analyzing, stop worrying, stop _thinking_ , before he worked himself into a state.

“Maybe you should _beg_ me for it,” Fives said, letting his voice go deep the way Echo made fun of but secretly went crazy for.

He kissed his way across the pebbled skin of Echo’s shoulder, trailing light fingers up and down his sides—a tease, but also to keep himself from drifting away.

Echo gasped, the backwash from his gills stuttering over Fives’s cheek. “Come _on_ , already, I didn’t f-fucking tie myself up you to _look_ at.”

Fives paused in his progress toward Echo’s nipple. _I didn’t tie myself up for you to look at_. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, you did.”

“I—what?”

Fives’s grip tightened on the rope. “That’s exactly why you tied yourself up. For me to look at.” He rolled his hand, winding the rope around his palm, taking in the slack. “And I’m gonna finish the job.”

Echo gaped at him, speechless; Fives reached up to loosen the slipknot around his wrists just enough to give them room to shift. Patterns formed in his mind, knots and ties he could use. He had his own rope, too, tied to his belt; he could add that to Echo’s, make more complicated knots. He imagined its fibers digging into Echo’s flesh, and he had to take a moment to get himself under control. This was a competition as much as it was sex, and Fives wouldn’t be the one to lose it. 

“Knuckle up, brother,” he whispered into the delicate curve of Echo’s ear. “You started it.” He reached up and began winding the rope around Echo’s wrist, wrapping it five times (yeah, he was a possessive bastard) before dropping it down to wrap around Echo’s shoulder. He paused. The angle wasn’t great. There’d be too much slack, and he’d need to be sparing of his rope.

Only one thing to do. He muscled Echo up so his wrists were even with the back of his head, and cinched the rope tight.

“Watch it!”

“ _You_ watch it,” Fives shot back. He checked Echo’s expression, just to be safe. His pupils were blown, and he wasn’t fighting; instead, his neck was bared and he was staring at Fives like he barely recognized him. In a good way, though. In a “Holy shit, this one night stand turned out so much fucking better than I’d thought it would” kind of way. Fives looked down. Half a hand’s length of Echo’s cock had slipped out, pink and tapered, curling gently in the current. Yeah. They were good. 

It was slow work, but the soft puffs of Echo’s breath against his fingers, and the distant crashing surf, settled Fives into a frame of mind he hadn’t expected to find, fooling around with his idiot brother. It was peaceful, like when he mended nets; it was focused, like when he hunted. And it was charged, because of the slip-slide of Echo’s skin under his fingertips, and the heat and nearness of his body, and the scent of him—the tips of Fives’s caudal fins curled a little in anticipation.

One arm done. The rope wrapped Echo’s forearm and bicep, sheathing them in two separate but connected cuffs, forcing his elbow into a narrow angle. The bulge of his bicep seemed twice as perfect on display like this. Fives trailed his thumb over Echo’s near nipple, just to feel it stiffen up and watch Echo writhe.

“Fuck, Fives.” Echo looked like he’d eaten a ghost slug, his eyes dark and his cheeks flushed. His lips were bitten red, and Fives’s lips tingled with the urge to kiss, but he held off. He wasn’t done yet.

“That’s the idea, my brother,” he said into the heated water between them. He ran the flat of his hand down Echo’s chest, down his stomach, stopping just before the top of Echo’s slit, and was rewarded by the sight of Echo’s cock slipping out another finger’s width. It twisted up, searching for Fives’s hand, but Fives pulled away before Echo could find the relief.

“You’re an asshole,” Echo panted, his hips jerking, his tail curling up reflexively.

“You’re goddamn impatient,” Fives replied. He shrugged off his toolbelt and let it sink to the seafloor, taking off his spare rope before he did. Echo’s rope still had slack enough to tangle in the stipe’s holdfast; good. Fives had some complicated fucking knots in mind. He reached up with the new hank and started in on Echo’s other arm.  
Thunder rolled overhead, muffled by the fathoms of water between them and the sky, and lightning flickered. Fives’s hands faltered on the rope. They’d had their share of idiot moments—the thing with the sea urchins came to mind—and it wasn’t even the first time they’d tempted fate with the storm surge. This was different, though. Fives had seen whole kelp forests ripped up by the force of a storm’s currents, and here he was, tying his brother to one. His hands shook as he wrapped Echo’s wrist. It was too fucking late to back out now.

“Hey,” Echo said quietly. “Look at me.”

Fives hesitated, heat rushing to his cheeks. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. The one in charge—the one with the rope, anyway—wasn’t supposed to need comforting.

“Fives, come on.”

He glanced to Echo’s face.

“We’ve got plenty of time.” His brother’s eyes were gentle, a small, fond smile on his lips. “We haven’t seen a single morumoru head for deep water, yet. That decipus, he hasn’t burrowed in, yet.” He craned forward at an uncomfortable angle to kiss Fives’s shoulder, the closest part he could reach, strung up as he was. “Listen to the aiwha. This’ll be an easy storm, my brother.”

Aiwha never sang through hurricanes. Echo was right; this was just a squall. A little noise, a bit of crashing, and over in a blink. Fives ducked his head. He’d let his nerves get the better of him.

“Fucking rookie mistake,” he mumbled, and wrapped another loop. 

“Make it up to me,” Echo replied, arching out his chest in a sinuous ripple.

Fives cast the slack end of the rope down. “Try and move your arms.”

Echo obliged, tried to bring his elbows down, then to raise his wrists; it wasn’t happening. His head fell back and his eyes went hooded. “You tied me up good.”

“Ain’t even started.” Fives leaned in for a kiss. He kept it featherlight, the cold taste of the open ocean on their lips, pushed in by the approaching storm surge. He pulled back with a shaky breath. Echo trailed his eyes down his body, lingering near his pelvic fins, before dragging them back up to Fives’s face.

“Getting a little eager, there, Fives.”

Fives hazarded a look down. He wasn’t much better than Echo: half his dick hanging out already, searching for its piece of the action.

“Not as eager as you,” he shot back, and pushed himself back into his body. A shudder wracked down his spine, urchin skin breaking out over his belly. He didn’t move his hand until he knew he wouldn’t slip back out again, and he didn’t—but his sheath was visibly swollen, a bulge with swollen lips about his slit. His body wanted his cock _out_. Fives squeezed his pelvic muscles until his fists clenched, and his erection waned just enough that he could look back up to meet Echo’s expression.

It was slackjawed with lust. Echo had never been able to do that; when his cock came out, it was out to stay. It had made his coming-of-age mortifying for him, but it had also made cherished memories for Fives, and given him bragging rights for days.

His hands were trembling just slightly when he reached for the trailing ends of the ropes, like he'd swum all the way to the iron reef and back twice without stopping to eat. The coarse seagrass fibers rasped over his palms, pebbling the skin over his arms. Echo watched him, his head tilted back just slightly to bare his neck. His gills fluttered against his neck, showing tender, hidden pink against his brown skin.

Pass the ends across his chest. Loop them loosely to hold their place; another pair of loops around his neck to await a future tie to his dorsal fin. Patterns manifested across Fives's mind’s eye: symmetrical, intricate. He laid rope across his brother’s skin and pulled it tight, until Echo gasped and trembled to keep still. A row of flat knots marched down Echo’s chest, diagonals radiating outward over the cut of muscle in his ribs, anchored in the back by the guide rope Fives had cinched between Echo’s neck and dorsal fin. He was bowed into a slight arch, his chest thrust out, his neck bared lest he choke himself.

“Where did you learn all this?” he asked, the stress of the position reducing his voice to a rasp.

Fives shrugged. “I didn't. It's just knots and a little creative thinking.” He tightened a knot low over Echo’s hips. He had plans for that knot.

“You gonna wrap me up all the way down? Leave rope burns on my tail fins when we’re done?”

Fives ran his free hand down Echo’s flank, over tough tailskin and the heavy muscle beneath. “Might, yeah.” Patterns spooled out and vanished, until better ideas took their place. He grabbed the rope ends and looped them, holding them in place. This was the tricky part. He laid the noose, then carefully took Echo in hand.

“Oh, suns.” Echo’s head fell back, his cock twitching against Fives’s fingers. He jerked his head back up, though, to watch as Fives slipped his cock through the loop he’d formed in the slack ropes.

“What—”

“Just wait,” Fives answered. His gills felt overheated, like the mineral vents out by the drop-off. Echo’s cock writhed, scraping against the rough rope, sending shocky jitters through Echo’s body. Fives pressed it up against Echo’s belly with the flat of his palm. “None of that, come on.”

“Fuck, fuck _fuck_ ,” Echo whined. “Let go, suns, I can’t—”

Fives eased up, and Echo, a solid line of trembling muscle, kept his cock still, a desperate curve against his stomach, the slender tip pulsing with his heartbeat.

“There you go,” Fives said softly, then finished the other side of the loop, pulling the long ends of the ropes through, then slowly, teasingly, pulled them taught, hauling back and forth to lay the knots evenly against Echo’s skin. To burrow into the tender edges of Echo’s swollen, everted sheath. To tease his cock, without any kind of release. To pull the knot Fives had left above it down against the clump of nerves at the top of his slit.

Echo tugged against the ropes, arching the small amount he could; it sawed the ropes against his cock, digging into the delicate tissues at the base, the knot teasing the root. His cock lashed. He moaned, his eyes clenched shut, his fins spreading wide before pulling in, his whole body gasping for release.

“Shhh,” Fives said, using the ropes under Echo’s pecs to pull himself in. “Easy. I’ve got you.” He gently tugged Echo’s head so his forehead pressed against his own. He stroked Echo’s close-cropped hair until he settled.

The moment was broken by Echo’s cock, because of course it was. Fives had laid his warm body against Echo’s, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to feel the prod of slippery muscle against his slit, searching for any hole to burrow into, but—

“Oh for—seriously, Echo!”

“I can’t _help_ it! Neither can you!”

Fives hauled Echo’s cock away from him and stuffed it under the nearest line of rope, trapping it.

“The fuck!”

“Get some control over yourself,” Fives replied, which he _knew_ was a load of aiwha shit, coming from him—

“ _That’s_ a load of fucking aiwha shit!” Echo spat. He writhed against the ropes, straining and flexing his tail, and Fives’s annoyance melted away at the play of muscle.

Finally Echo arched his back, the ropes against his slit digging in viciously, and he whimpered—but it was enough. His cock slipped out from under the ropes, almost too hard to writhe, now, just a solid, tapering arc of flesh.

“You are the stubbornnest shithead I’ve ever met,” Fives said, fond despite himself. He made a half-hearted attempt to finish tying Echo off, and he managed at least to get halfway down his tail, before he cinched the ropes and let it be.

It was more than good. Echo was straining against the ropes, his biceps bulging twice as much between their cuffs of rope, his abs clenched and cut with it, straining for release, his cock less pink now and more angry red.

The storm was deepening overhead. The water grew colder, tasting of distant reefs and strange currents Fives had never swam before. He let his cock slip out, and the chill bit down to his spine, sending shocks all the way into the tips of his fins. Echo must be frantic for the warmth of another body, at this point. Fives kicked at the water, pushing him up against Echo’s body, laying his mouth over one little pointed nipple, suckling it until Echo keened. “Please, Fives, suns please just let me come.”

“Gonna have to wait a while longer, my brother,” Fives said against his chest. He reached down, trailing his fingers against the rope-teased edges of Echo’s sheath. “Unless you think you can pull back in, make some room for me?”

Echo’s hands clenched spasmodically behind his head. “I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking.

Fives shrugged. “Ass it is.”

Echo full-body shivered. “There’s—there’s not time.”

Fives used the ropes to haul himself into place, placing his chilled cocktip against the lower end of Echo’s slit. “No? Come on, brother, you said it yourself—this’ll be a quiet storm.”

“C-Cody’ll come looking.”

Fives eased his cock out, just enough to feel the tight ring of Echo’s hole, just enough for the heat of Echo’s body to melt through his, to chase away the chill of the storm-currents.

“Nah,” Fives said. “You want me in your ass, but you’re embarrassed by it.”

Echo went silent, and Fives very carefully didn’t press forward, though all his body screamed for it.

They hadn’t been playing with each other’s asses for very long. Usually they fucked each other’s mouths, or better yet, their sheaths—sliding their cocks against each other, half-hard, twining, and wanting; but anal was only a few thumbs-lengths lower, and they could get fully hard, and there was a little spot just inside that, when you hit it with a finger, or pressed against it with your dick, it sent stars behind your eyes.

Echo was shy, though. Fives let him work through it.

The tentative press of his tail against Fives’s was answer enough. _Go slow. I’m trusting you_.

Fives gave Echo’s cock a slow pull, fingering the sensitive tip as he slipped his own cock into Echo’s body a fraction of a finger. Echo gasped, arching into the dual sensations; Fives rocked with it, to keep from going too fast.

All of a sudden, a surge of water blew through the forest, driving the kelp stipes over. Fives was left suspended under Echo, clinging to the ropes, as Echo’s tail, the only part of him save his cock that was free to move, hooked ineffectually over Fives’s caudal fins. Fives’s cock slipped out of Echo’s body and into stinging cold.

“The _fuck_!”

“I didn’t do anything, it was—hold on, hold on!”

The surge eased, and around them the forest slowly righted itself—save for their own stipe, pulled down as it was by the combined weight of two fully-grown mers. Echo’s eyes were wide and solid black. “Fives, I swear to everything holy.” 

“Fuck _you_ ,” Fives said breathlessly, his cheeks hot and his dick cold.

“Yes! By all means! Vertically, please!”

Fives’s brain finally engaged, and he managed to kick them, and the stipe, back upright. He clung to Echo’s ropes, his breath coming short. His cock hadn’t softened at all, a distant part of his mind was pleased to note.

Echo shuddered against him. “Fives,” he breathed. “Please.”

Fives didn’t need more encouragement. He tucked his cock back into Echo’s slit and, with a slow, steady thrust, slicked by his own juices, he pushed back into Echo’s body, pausing every so often to let Echo get used to him. He shivered when their hips met. Echo’s cock was a line of heat pressed against his belly, the tip of it burrowing frantically into Fives’s belly button.

“Don’t think it’s gonna get lucky there,” Fives said, half out of his head at the blazing heat of Echo’s body.

Echo laughed, almost hysterically, and Fives groaned as he felt it around his cock. “Fives, you absolute fucker,” he said.

“Kinda the idea,” Fives mumbled to Echo’s chest. He clung to the ropes, to the stipe, to Echo, wherever he could get a grip, his hips thrusting forward without his conscious thought. “Are—are you okay—” he gasped.

“Yeah, yeah, _yeah_ yeah,” Echo gasped back. The ropes by his head creaked ominously, but they held. “Don’t stop, do not _fucking_ stop—”

Fives angled his thrust up, grinding the base of his cock against the top of Echo’s hole as best he could, and he was rewarded by Echo’s full-body clench.

“ _There_ , fucking do that again—”

The waves above them thundered, the light strange and gray, the currents rushing; their kelp stipe washed to and fro in the storm surge, but nothing broke the clinch of their bodies. Fives rutted against Echo, his body producing more slick for the tender skin of his cock. He clung to the ropes for leverage, and he was about to drive into that sweet spot again, to try and wring another cock-melting clench out of Echo’s body, but the taste of ozone filled his mouth, and he went rigid.

“Fives,” Echo said from a distance. “Fives, come on, back with me—”

Fives didn’t hear him. He tasted electricity in the water, and his attention was caught on the maelstrom above.

Blinding light and a deafening shockwave. The kelp forest bowed beneath the weight of it, and beneath the pounding downsurge of hot water. Pure light ripped across the surface, so bright and absolute it left purple afterimages across Fives’s eyes. 

“—ives! Fives, come on, snap out of it!” Echo flipped his tail out and caught Fives across the anal fins, and he came back to himself. He’d drifted away, staring upward, petrified.

“Echo,” he said, his voice feeling small. His cock had shriveled, his gills fluttering in near-panic.

“Okay,” Echo said, craning his head to look at his hands. “Okay, I’m gonna need you to untie me.”

Fives ducked his head, shame eating a hole through his belly. Some warrior he was: losing his shit over a squall even the aiwha knew not to worry about. His hands trembled as he plucked at the cinch knot, prying it loose so he could free up the rest. The heavens flashed bright again—just a little flash, not anything, but he still ducked against Echo’s stomach like a feckless merling.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he found himself saying. 

“Don’t be, don’t be sorry,” Echo was saying back. “I should have known better. Come on, my brother, untie me and we can find shelter. You’re the bravest man I know, don’t let this tell you different.”

Unwrapping Echo’s arms was the most frustrating part, the long ends taking precious moments to draw up at every pass, until finally Fives gathered them into balls and passed them through the triangles of Echo’s arms and head. He dropped his own rope when it came free, letting it sink down to his toolbelt, but it took several more passes—and then the cinch knot to the stipe—to loosen Echo’s. Echo brought his arms down and immediately wrapped Fives in a crushing hug. “We’re both dumbasses,” he said. They slowly sank to the sea floor, where the currents weren’t as fierce. Echo’s toolbelt was there too, half-covered in surge-shifted sand. He geared them both, tying Fives’s belt low on his hips the way Fives liked, then looked up to his face. He must have looked especially pathetic, because Echo reached up to kiss him. “Hey,” he said into the space between them. “I’m not mad.”

Fives turned his face away, unable to express that _he_ was, at himself.

“Now it’s just _you_ being a dumbass.” Echo reached out and pinched Fives’s nipple, and Fives yelped, because it fucking _hurt_.

They wrestled right there in the dirt like the brothers they were, tangling tails and outrage, until Echo had Fives pinned. Fives stared past his shoulder, to the surface far above; it roiled and swirled, black with the anger of a storm.

“No, don’t look at that, look at me,” Echo said, laying his forehead against Fives’s and blocking out the view. He pushed his hips against Fives’s, and there was his cock, slipping into Fives’s sheath. “Look at me, Fives.”

Fives did, his hands digging into Echo’s sides, and he bit his lip both against the fear and the slow intrusion. His own cock wriggled its way in alongside Echo’s. This was familiar territory. Their first time had been like this, pressed against the sandy, dappled crevices of the far reef, where the coral was too shallow to make proper quarters out of, but where horny teenagers could poke at each other without worrying if their older brothers would find them. The sand at Fives’s back soothed him. The bedrock wasn’t far down; no lightning would reach them, this deep. The swiftest, most dangerous rip currents wouldn’t lower this close to the sea floor. Echo had him; he was safe.

It wasn’t as thrilling as fucking against a stipe in the middle of a storm, but Fives didn’t have the spines for that.

“I’ve got you,” Echo said, the clicks and whistles of his voice soothing against Fives’s skin. He nuzzled under Fives’s neck, at his ears; his hands were firm as he pressed Fives down against the sand. He had his tail braced against the kelp stipe to do it, Fives finally noticed. He got his head in the game and reached out for the nearest holdfast, to hold himself and Echo fast. The heat that had fled his body crept back in, and he writhed against Echo, grinding the swollen, slick edges of their slits together as their cocks fought to make room in each other’s bodies.

“M’close,” Fives said, when the chill of terror had been burned out by arousal. His pelvic fins were spasming up, cradling up against Echo’s hips; Echo’s own were pressing back down against them, the rough scrape of his skin sending shudders through Fives’s body. He could rub himself raw, against Echo’s tailskin. He had, before, and endured Rex’s exhausted look of incredulity after. He smiled against Echo’s mouth at the memory.

“That’s it,” Echo murmured. “Easy goes it. Almost there.”

He clutched at Echo’s body and throbbed his release into the tight grip of his sheath, and felt the heated rush of Echo’s spend fill his own. He sobbed at the intensity of it. Echo kissed him through it, kissed his eyes, his cheeks, his fucking nose. Adrenaline and fear and love and spunk, all wrung out of him in a few spasms of muscle and a wash of exhaustion.

“Okay,” Fives said when he’d settled back in his skin. “This wasn’t the _worst_ idea you’ve ever had.”

Echo snorted. “Do I even want to know the rubric you’re measuring against?”

“Nah.”

They lay for a time against the sandy bottom, watching the vaulted peaks of waves rolling in from the deep water. Fives thought maybe the storm was calming. “We should get back,” he finally said, though leaving the warm circle of Echo’s arms was the last thing he wanted.

“Mm,” Echo said, his eyes half-lidded, his head against Fives’s shoulder. Then he darted up, fast as a minnow. “Race you,” he said, and he was off in a flash, trailing spunk and laughter.

“Echo!” Fives howled after, like he always did, and raced to catch up.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Mermay! This has been in my WIPs folder for literally two years, I figured it was past time I posted it. And once upon a time I had a reference pic for the knots Fives does on Echo, but... it got lost in the tumblr pornpocalypse.
> 
> In other news, I noticed that this is twice in a row I tagged a fic for CBT. My kinks are showing.


End file.
